During his childhood in Afghanistan, Massoud Hassani would make miniature models to be blown by the wind. Sometimes they would end up in a minefield, where he could not retrieve them. Now Massoud’s wind-powered creations are designed specifically for minefields.

maandag 25 april 2011

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Finally, the show by recent graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven demonstrated again that no other school consistently produces such imaginative work. Massoud Hassani's wind-powered anti-landmine ball was inspired by his native Afghanistan, a country rumoured to have more mines than people. Even more impressive was Dirk van der Kooij's use of a retired production robot from a Chinese factory to print out chairs made of plastic from old fridges.

Eindhoven's students are going places. The question is: where? As design schools churn out ever more graduates, their future looks ever more precarious. There are some important lessons to be learned, though. Today's designers need to be tougher business people; they need to negotiate harder and hold on to their copyright. But if there is one moral to this story it is this: design is a way of life that so many people want to participate in, they'll do it whether or not there's a viable living in it. Even some of the manufacturers are haemorrhaging cash to hold on to this dream within a dream.

During his childhood in Afghanistan, Massoud Hassani would make miniature models to be blown by the wind. Sometimes they would end up in a minefield, where he could not retrieve them. Now Massoud’s wind-powered creations are designed specifically for minefields. Like a giant clump of dandelion seeds, his Mine Kafon will roll about, detonating any mines in its path. “There are 30 million land mines in Afghanistan and 26 million people, so that’s more mines than people,” Massoud says. Each deminer is to have a GPS tracking device linked to a website showing which areas have been cleared

As always, the graduate projects fro m Design Academy Eindhoven had quite an impressive showing this year with everything from material explorations to animal habitats and repurposed tooling machinery. Check out our quick snapshot of some of our favorite student work from this year's presentation.

The Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) graduate exhibition is an eagerly anticipated part of Milan design week. This year’s exhibition was called ‘This Way’ and was once again curated by British designer Ilse Crawford (coincidentally, the guest editor of the May/June issue of Vogue Living), who is head of the school’s Department of Man and Wellbeing. Projects from over 40 graduates from the school’s 2010 Bachelors and Masters programs were on display.

Some of the work that caught the Vogue Living team’s attention included an anti-landmine device, below, inspired by the Afghan-born designer Massoud Hassani‘s experience growing up in areas littered with minefields. The wind-powered creation takes its shape from miniature models Hassani created as a child and clumps of dandelion seeds, and is designed to roll around a field detonating the mines it encounters. According to the Academy, the Dutch department of Defence is in talks with the designer about using a GPS-linked version of his device.